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BloodKeeper
Biography Ba'luhd Khee'par always refers to himself by his full name. However, he has no issue with answering to either part of it when addressed by others. As a matter of fact he has given up on trying to correct how people pronounce his name. Evidently, with most of them having those tiny round ears and thick clumsy tongues, they can neither register nor duplicate the subtle inflections that comprise "Ba'luhd Khee'par". Emergence: Ba'luhd Khee'par woke slowly, groggy and confused, his cheek resting against cold, damp stone. His body ached in the way that usually indicates it has been pushed to, and maybe past, its physical limits. Pressing palms down he shakily raises his head to appraise his situation. Though his mind was slowly clearing, his confusion just grew as he viewed his surroundings. He lay halfway out of a circle of symbols drawn on the floor of an unfinished stone chamber. None of the symbols seemed familiar. No two of them appeared to be the same, though that was not certain because sections were smudged or wiped out entirely, including the arc that crossed beneath his waist. The symbols were drawn, or painted, using various substances, with some evidently carved or etched into the floor. Each symbol that was still intact enough touched the next at some point in its pattern. They had probably constituted a complete, unbroken ring. His head had cleared considerably, but there was still something wrong. "I am Ba'luhd Khee'par and I..." Nothing. He has nothing with which to finish that statement. A slight vertigo creeps into the edges of his awareness. He could remember nothing beyond the point of waking just now. Even the chamber he was in brought no feelings of familiarity. And considering the state of the chamber it would seem something significant should be in his memory. There appeared to have been a recent struggle, a ferocious one by the evidence: the partially obliterated circle; the dark iron bound wood door hanging half off its hinges; the lifeless bodies sprawled around the circle. No, not lifeless. Ba'luhd Khee'par could feel the life still residing within the bodies, though he was not sure exactly how he could tell that was true. Attempting to rise further in order to investigate, Ba'luhd Khee'par feels his limbs tremble; he collapses back onto floor. The heat of anger creeps up the back of his neck onto his scalp. "I am Ba'luhd Khee'par and I will not succumb to this weakness!" Focusing his concentration, he pushes up from the floor once more. The awareness of his physical ailments comes into sharper focus and he exhorts his body to perform in the manner for which it is designed. He gives special attention to those muscles and ligaments failing him most, attempting to push them past the limitations currently imposed by their injuries. Suddenly, he realizes that he can feel what is wrong with each of them. The knowledge comes to him in the same way he could tell life still clung to the bodies around the circle. And he knew, somehow, that he could do something about it. He reached for the injured places, but not with any of the limbs that were in contact with the cold stone beneath him. He reached with, well; he wasn't sure how to explain it. Using the mysterious sense to guide him he reached, manipulated, cajoled. A different kind of heat began to build within his body. It coalesced at the top of his head then swept along the length of his body. Afterward his body felt somewhat rejuvenated, his head clearer. But still there was that lack, a black empty whole where his personal definition of self should be. He rose and crossed to the nearest body, kneeling to see what he could learn. Despite their twisted postures on the floor, indicative of the struggle that had flung or toppled them, none of the bodies showed signs of significant physical trauma. Once again his unusual sense, on which he was quickly learning to rely, gave him information that could not be easily gathered by sight or touch. He turned the body before him over, the head lolling as he did so. Gently at first, then more vigorously, Ba'luhd Khee'par attempted to rouse the being. Finally the eyes fluttered open, but they were empty of any awareness of their surroundings. He probed deeper with the sense, finding a chaotic collection of fractured images and incoherent partial thoughts. It was as if someone or something had taken the contents of this being's mind and dashed them to the granite floor, sweeping the resulting shattered debris back into his head. "So were these opponents or comrades?" he thought. Did Ba'luhd Khee'par himself have something to do with their present incapacity or did he narrowly avoid sharing their fate, as evidenced by his own mental damage, the lacking memories? Going strictly by appearances might indicate the former. True these beings were constructed similarly to himself; bilateral symmetry and, to judge from their footwear, bipedal locomotion. But even with them lying prone he could tell they would stand much shorter than him when upright. In proportion they appeared to be much stockier than him. Some of the specimens might have weighed more than he did despite the height difference. And though most of them wore voluminous loose robes, a few had on tighter leggings and that was enough for him to decide that they lacked a tail. And then there was the skin color. Even in this uneven and unusual light, some combination of flickering torchlight and glowing green crystals, he could tell that their skin was much paler than his. Their skin would make them easy to spot in low light conditions, while his was a dark grey that matched the chamber that surrounded him. When he had earlier pushed his palms flat to the floor to stand, his hands had blended perfectly with the floor beneath. When he rose from the floor it might have seemed that a section of the stone had decided to end its somnolent existence and rise up to become a living, motive being. Ba'luhd Khee'par broke off his examination of the bodies after determining they all were stricken by the same malady. He headed toward the damaged door, which appeared to be the only exit from the room. The door's frame was worked stone fitted into the natural stone around it and was of such a size that he would not have to duck to cross its threshold. But first he needed to open the door. Unlike the bodies on the floor it showed the scars of powerful physical forces used against it. It was still attached to the frame by only a handful of its many hinges. It was quite a bit taller than he was and almost as wide as his outstretched hands. Even in good condition it was probably quite heavy to move and now it was partly resting on the floor, courtesy of the broken hinges. Ba'luhd Khee'par quickly determined that he couldn't move it just by pushing or pulling. Stepping back he extended his sense and his reach, using the former to tell him where to push or pull with the latter. While he was able to get the door to move a fraction of a inch on his second try he realized his reach was not strong enough to move the door. "So there are limits here" he thought. No matter. He searches the chamber until he finds a large iron candelabrum that was still intact, using it to lever the door open enough to allow his slender frame to slide through. Only to be confronted by another obstacle. The next chamber, also of stone but much larger than the first, is bisected by a wide chasm, blocking his way from a tunnel that could barely be seen on the far wall. Peering over the side Ba'luhd Khee'par doesn't detect a bottom, at least not in the range of his eyes or sense. Nearby some stone work at the edge of the gap tells of what might have been a wide stone bridge that once spanned it. "It's like I am being tested here" he mutters. Thinking for a minute he concentrates his sense and reach upon himself and the floor beneath his feet. Pushing with great mental effort his feet rise up off of the floor. But he cannot rise very far, and he tires very quickly from the attempt. Evidently he won't just be able to fly his way across. The idea of trying a running jump and using his reach to augment the result seemed a little to risky considering how little he knows about its limits. Casting his sense outwards he probes the other side of this room. "I am here and I want to get over there" he keeps repeating to himself. Slowly, pale glowing lines start to materialize from whatever point he is studying back to his own location. Picking a particular spot on the far side Ba'luhd Khee'par increases his concentration. A web-work of glowing lines comes into focus. Sending his sense scanning back and forth across it he feels that it represents, what? They seem to be representations of connections points between his location and the spot he was focusing on over the far side of the chasm. Here, in this part of space/time, the two spots are separated by a distance. This web-work showed gaps or pathways, he wasn't sure how you would actually describe it, in space/time where the two points are actually touching. Ba'luhd Khee'par tried focusing on the web and walking forward, but the web-work just adjusted and changed to show the new set of pathways between his altered location and the far point. Once more Ba'luhd Khee'par sends out his sense and selects a particular thread of the web-work. Extending his reach both outward, through the thread, to the far point and inward into his own body he is able to do what he couldn't in the confines of this space/time. His reach moves his body along the thread and suddenly he is at the spot on the far side of the room. Smiling in satisfaction he proclaims to the stone surrounding him "I am Ba'luhd Khee'par and I will not be stopped by a hole in the floor!". Heading up the gently sloping tunnel he eagerly waits to see what will present itself next. Existence Since his exit from the underground chambers in which he awoke Ba'luhd Khee'par has been searching for answers. The questions are the kind that could be viewed in the existential sense, but for his situation are actually very pragmatic. How and why is he here? Who, or even what, is he? Finding himself within the borders of Paragon city upon emergence he finds that the bewildering variety of beings that inhabit the city complicates things considerably. Between human residents, some with greatly altered genetic structure, aliens from other planets, and beings from other planes of existence, the possibilities of his origin seem almost endless. And though he has yet to meet another one quite like himself, he is far from being the only unique person around. He has even met others whose abilities are similar to his own, some a magnitude more powerful. Shortly after establishing himself within the city he decided that the broken minds he encountered upon awakening must have belonged to members of a group styling themselves "The Circle of Thorns". This hypothesis seemed to be somewhat supported due to several early attempts by this group to lure him into traps and capture him. But this group seems to be just one of many determined to pull the city apart. Each of these organizations seems to rally around lowest of motivations with little regard for how their actions affect others. Often it seems they desire nothing more than to destroy, enslave, or rule over the masses. He feels no compassion towards this viewpoint, thus assumes that his relationship with the Circle is not one of mutual consent. On the other hand, there is a population of beings that strive against these forces of chaos. They often selflessly position themselves between the machinations of those with less than honorable intentions and the hordes of innocents that live in the city. Ba'luhd Khee'par has come to admire these "heroes" quite a bit and has taken to assisting many of them in their sometimes herculean tasks. Often, when he does successfully help in a matter of import, it feels like some portion of a large, invisible burden has been removed from his shoulders. And sometimes assisting in these matters results in information pertaining to his personal quest. His first and foremost motivation is unraveling the mystery of his background. Ba'luhd Khee'par is often out on his own tracking down one group or another in pursuit of leads and information regarding the Circle of Thorns or any other sources of information about his origin. And while some might note that he gets a little zealous in his actions while on his personal missions, they are often willing to overlook that due to the work he does when assisting other heroes. As one shady "member" of society put it: "If you suddenly hear 'I am Ba'luhd Khee'par and I will have answers!' while in your supposedly secure location you kinda realize things are about to go badly south." Powers With his Sense and his Reach Ba'luhd Khee'par has proven that he is not to be taken lightly. His set of abilities keeps evolving, though he often feels that he is not so much learning new ways to combine the two but is rediscovering things he has known in the past. Using the two he is able to accelerate the natural healing process for those around him. In extreme cases he can even allow an ally to continue fighting on by taking a large portion of their pain and transferring it to himself. He can use Sense not only to make attacks made by Reach more effective, but also make others believe they are taking more damage from the attacks than they actually are. He can use Sense to determine what to alter in a persons mind so that they do not register his existence, even when standing right next to them. He can use the two together to get a similar affect from many mechanical devices as well. With Sense he has discovered various techniques to demolish opponents; bringing to surface their greatest fears, making them think their allies are their greatest foes, overloading their senses so they cannot function, or convincing them they are facing a cadre of invincible heroes. With his powers he tends to fill up the mental institutions more so than jails or graveyards. This, he figures, is better for the economy anyways; the first would employ more skilled personnel than the other two.